That doesn’t answer my question. Let me rephrase: how do the proposed mandatory sentences differ from current practices? Is there evidence that repeat offenders are currently given lighter sentences than this law would propose?
Even though it’s murder, it’s not significant compared to the number of murders in the country.
Homicide rate 5.0/100,000. 15,809 homicides in 2014
Look for a solution to that.
I feel like there needs to be a law that states that any piece of legislation named “[Person’s] Law” is inherently suspect legislation and should probably be stopped.
Not at all. I’ve already made the argument against it. If you’re opposed to murder, imprison murderers not illegal immigrants.
Who would you put in prison? A murderer who was born in America or an illegal immigrant who hasn’t committed murder?
Hmm. Forced labor?
So, the plan is to capture illegals who have been deported then came back, and house & feed them while they’re now unproductive and don’t pay any taxes ? Also while they learn criminal behaviour from criminals ?
Sounds S-M-R-T.
Yes! We could call it asterion’s law.
Wait a minute…
Also, I agree with you that laws named after people tend to be terrible.
From OP’s cite:
Careful consideration was not an option. Something had to be done.
Perhaps you’re not familiar with trickle-economics. Money spent voluntarily trickles throughout the economy, even to unworthy Democrat-supporting businesses. With the money funneled to the private contractors appointed by Trump to manage federal prisons, profits can trickle to just the right people.
This is a deliberate attempt to deceive the reader. The subject is not immigrants as a whole, or even immigrants who overstay their visas. One hundred percent of immigrants who would be subject to Kate’s Law are criminals, because improper entry of an alien is itself a crime, and Kate’s Law specifically only applies to aliens who are entering the United States improperly.
OK the bit about how unlawful entry to the US ipso facto makes you a criminal because it is a defined penal offense is often dismissed as semantic pedantry but in this case it does have to do with how this proposal is perceived among the public: Many an average man-on-the-street views instances such as Kate’s Law as referring to unlawful immigrants who in turn engage in other common criminal activity (be it petty or felonious, property or violent crime). The proposal, however, is independent of that: it involves a mandatory sentencing for recidivism in the offense of unlawful entry to the US itself which, again, by itself is not a violent offense. It would equally send up the river for 5 years someone whose activities while unlawfuly in the US consisted only of picking the produce for your salad or selling cell phone accessories, as it would the potential rapists and drug dealers.
(And it would potentialy dissuade victims of trafficking from coming forward since they would be admitting to having engaged in unlawful immigration)
Which is not to say that there should not be *some *sort of penalty for recidivism, or at least an incentive to not engage in it, but one has to weigh the pros and cons. Starting with whether those deported on first offense with no misconduct other than that will or will not have it held against them if they decide to try for legal entry, potentially driving them into the unlawful channel.
Yep, just as clever as mandatory sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. Do we want to return to some poor country/neighborhood after 5 years what may now be a trained gang member?
It’s a cheap ploy “If we don’t pass this her death will have been in vain/we will dishonor her life”; akin to “If we can SAVE JUST ONE person from the same it’s worth it”
Good point.
Illegal immigrants are a big net plus for the American economy, economically beneficial for a large majority of Americans, very good for businesses in general, and therefore good for campaign donors.
Many anti-illegal immigrant laws, while bad for the illegal immigrants, are designed to further enrich the people and businesses exploiting them.
The only reason to make sentences mandatory is if we think that a one-size-fits-all number is to be preferred to trusting the discretion of whomever would have previously made the decision. If we do trust the judicial process, then an increase in the maximum sentence would be a more appropriate response to a concern about light sentencing.
So, by passing this law we’re saying that we think the judgment of the judges who would normally do the sentencing of these offenders is so poor that we need to override it to force a longer sentence in cases where the particular judge hearing the specifics of a particular case believes such a sentence would not be warranted.
Personally, I lean to trusting public trials and judges a fair bit as the best of the available options for justice, so I’m mostly in opposition to mandatory minimums in general. (There do exist problematic verdicts, to be sure, but in my view these are the exception rather than the rule. The response to a particular bad verdict should be against that particular judge rather than to all judges in all situations.)
No mandatory minimums for non-violent crimes (which illegal entry to the U.S. would be), I can probably get behind some form of mandatory minimum for violent crimes.
Judges (and some States juries) have traditionally had leeway in sentencing, and I’m fine with that. But some violent crimes we probably need to establish firm guidelines that require some amount of incarceration. I’m not sure what the right punishment for rape is, but I lean towards a very long prison sentence.
I’m extremely against the mandatory minimums for non-violent crimes, particularly drug crimes in the Federal system, because those are the real driver of prison overpopulation. I don’t really feel certain criminals like murderers and rapists necessarily should even be rehabilitated versus simply being removed from society forever.
I certainly don’t think it should be possible for a judge to give a white man 60 days in jail for rape and a black man 30 years, but right now it is very much possible.
Yeah, because we’ve all seen how poorly Megan’s Law turned out.
Mandatory sentences period are a bad idea. Judges should be allowed discretion and, well, judgment in sentencing. “Three strikes” and “Reagan’s Law”* crap are the wet dreams of Nixonian lawn order types.
- Points for the reference.
I agree in general mandatory minimum sentences are not a good idea. However in this particular case, and some others, the public has IMO a justified concern about the legal/political system especially in particular places malfunctioning pretty much on purpose. As they did (or perhaps still do in some cases, a separate debate) in some cases wrt deliberate racial bias.
It is IMO hard to explain the behavior of some local authorities, and even the federal govt in some cases, wrt criminal illegal immigrants other than the apparent one that they are pandering to an extreme ‘open borders’ view in refusing to consider illegal re-entry to the US after deportation as a crime subject to imprisonment in the US. It should be, at least in case of people who have committed other crimes previously while illegally in the US. If the contrary idea is that there should be no legal ramification to enter the country illegally, people should just say that openly (as, IMO, extreme people do, but elected officials seldom come out and say that even when their actions indicate it’s their belief).
The problem with mandatory sentencing laws is they often lead to the very sort of problems they’re supposed to be addressing.
People get outraged when somebody Juan Lopez-Sanchez, Rick Davis, Jesse Timmendequas, or Douglas Walker commits a horrifying crime and it comes out that they had committed previous crimes but been released from prison after a relatively short sentence. The public is outraged and laws are enacted requiring long mandatory sentences.
But you know what one of the main factors is in causing prisoners to get released early? Prison overcrowding. And guess what long mandatory sentences cause? Prison overcrowding.
If Megan’s Law is enacted, within ten years you’ll be seeing serious violent crimes committed by prisoners who were released to free up cells for the people locked up by Megan’s Law.
Ordinarily I’d agree with this. But we now face the prospect of a massive transfer of wealth from working people to the top 1% in the form of a privatizing free-for-all. Private, for-profit prisons will be springing up all over. (And will be spun as Job Creators, too, to make it worse.)
Megan’s Law won’t cause early releases because there will be, as the months go by, more and more (private, for-profit) prisons being built.
(And yes: Megan’s Law is a blatantly cynical appeal to racism, using people’s natural sympathy for the victims of horrible crimes as an excuse for locking up brown people. White people commit these crimes, too. Laws against the crimes are all that are needed. Laws targeting immigrants are irrelevant to the protection of women or children or anyone else–laws targeting the crimes are the relevant response.)
I posit, in this debate, that the last 2 posts were obviously thoughtful and intelligent. That is my debate position.
To me there’s a difference between what people call “mandatory sentencing laws” and recognizing that society at large should set some specific legal penalties to crimes, lest individual judges have too much power.
Laws passed specifically to require long prison sentences for things like drug offenses (as part of the war on drugs), or things like the “three strikes” law are what I believe most people are referring to when they talk about “mandatory sentencing.”
But since basically ever, statute has laid out proscriptions for breaking the law, the very old concept of specifying “20 to life” as a punishment for say, murder, being one example. It sets in stone that you’re to receive a 20 year minimum sentence for that crime, but with some possibility of eventually getting out.
Personally I think some “statutorily” defined penalties are appropriate, and probably the best way to alleviate them isn’t by giving too much power to judges, but by building more robust and accountable parole boards.